The changing rural/urban employment landscape: It’s not what you might expect

Someone asked me to provide employment trends in urban and rural areas and the source. The source is shown below the tables.

These tables show the employment change (percentage change) between 2006 and 2013 for urban and rural labour markets across Canada.

New Brunswick ranks dead last in Canada for the growth of employment in its CMAs and CAs (Moncton, Fredericton, SJ, Bathurst, Miramichi, Campbellton and Edmundston). In fact, there has been a 5% decline in total employment over the seven year period among the labour force aged 25-44 in New Brunswick. I think this is the biggest problem. The two main drivers of employment growth in Canada are natural resources (rural) and professional/creative occupations (urban). Right now, NB seems to have neither.

Among non-CMA/CAs – everywhere else – New Brunswick ranks third from the bottom for the total adult population but last among the population 25-44 which has seen employment drop by 20% in just seven years.

Among hard core rural, the third table, again NB ranks last in Canada among the 10 provinces. There is lots to unpack here if we dug deeper but suffice it to say that the substantial non-CMA/CA growth in Quebec could be people moving out of the cities into rural areas and then commuting back into the cities. I have done some other analysis that would suggest this. The rural employment growth in Alberta, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan is due in large part to natural resources development.

The tables may not say what they look like. The border of urban and rural employment is not clear now. This is partly caused by the movement of people from core urban areas to suburb or even rural areas.